CEO Eric Hirshberg told Joystiq that leaks are "part of our world now", noting that even governments and the military aren't safe.

"Friday was a really interesting, a really kind of cool day," he said, referring to the day of the leak. "No-one wakes up and thinks, 'I hope there's been a leak and our timing gets all messed up'.

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"And while it's definitely not cool to steal other people's intellectual property, and while it's definitely not cool to leak stuff that's not yours, there are ways that you can respond that actually turn the lemons into lemonade."

Hirshberg said that the company sat down and discussed its options after the leak, including sticking with its current marketing plan or to "lean even further into it". In the end, it made an effort to see through the "lens of our fans" and embrace it by releasing four teaser trailers earlier than planned.

"We woke up with a marketing crisis and wanted to go to bed with a marketing win," he said. "This wasn't something we had planned. But everyone seems excited, so we're just going to roll with it. So here they are, a couple of [teaser trailers] that weren't scheduled to be out for another couple of weeks, we're going to release 'em to you today'."

He continued: "We kept coming back to the fans, to the people who love this game; who are just waiting; for whom that day was just a really cool day. All that interest for us we knew was harnessable in a positive way.

"The other thing we wanted to do was, if there's gonna be a dialogue about our game, we want it to be between us and our fans and not between the leakers and our fans."

Hirshberg added that the source of the leak "clearly had deep access" but insisted that not everything that leaked was accurate. An internal investigation within the publisher is ongoing.

Modern Warfare 3 will be available on multiple platforms from November 8.